And so, hour after hour, we sat and chatted. I asked her if she liked a cigarette, and she gladly accepted. So we smoked together, while she told me something of herself. She was a native of Nimes, where her people had been wealthy landowners, she said, but some unfortunate speculation on her father’s part brought ruin to them, and she was now governess in the family of a certain Baron de Moret, of the Château de Moret, near Paris.
A governess! I had believed from her dress and manner that she was at least the daughter of some French aristocrat, and I confess I was disappointed to find that she was only a superior servant.
“I have just come from Nice,” she explained, “on very urgent business—business that concerns my own self. If I am not in Paris this morning I shall, in all probability, pay the penalty with my life.”
“How? What do you mean?”
In the grey dawn, as we went on towards Paris, I saw that her countenance was that of a woman who held a secret. At first I had been conscious that there was something unusual about her, and suspected her to be an adventuress; but now, on further acquaintance, I became convinced that she held possession of some knowledge that she was yearning to betray, yet feared to do so.
One fact that struck me as curious was that, in the course of our conversation, she showed that she knew my destination was London. This puzzled me.
“When we arrive in Paris I must leave you to keep my appointments,” she said. “We will meet again at the corner of the Rue Royale, if you really will take me on to Boulogne with you?”
“Most certainly,” was my reply.
“Ah!” she sighed, looking straight into my face with those great dark eyes that were so luminous, “you do not know—you can never guess what a great service you have rendered me by allowing me to travel here with you. My peril is the gravest that—well, that ever threatened a woman; yet now, by your aid, I shall be able to save myself. Otherwise, to-morrow my body would have been exposed in the Morgue—the corpse of a woman unknown.”
“These words of yours interest me.”